Miskatonic University Campus

In this episode, all four hosts talk about some of our favorite so-bad-it's-good movies and tropes to winnow for game inspiration. This episode was recorded on, May 15, 2017, and is sponsored by Golden Goblin Press!


Campus Crier
Cthulhu Mythos Books from Dark Regions Press

Graham Walmsley is going to launch the Cthulhu Dark Kickstarter on Monday, May 29. It'll last for about a month. We have an interview with Graham that we will release during the campaign.

Bagthulhu - The diabolically adorable Cthulhu Dicebag

Pax Cthuliana - A Cthulhu scenario

Srsly another MiniDisc release?? At the Mountains of Madness, by Allicorn!

Oh, by the way, Ken Hite is doing the 5th Ed of Vampire the Masquerade

Cthulhu Confidential is actually in print:

Masks of Nyarly Companion is actually in print:

The back-issue archive of Protodimension Magazine is available online again.

http://www.darkconspiracytherpg.info/pr ... ns-issues/

Chaosium News:
Fiction editor announced - James Lwowder!

Chaosium New Fiction Submissions Guidelines Released

Big News! Chaosium releases new RPG submissions guidelines

We’ve been missing these new items from Dean Englehart from Cthulhu Reborn, who is posting a lot of material for the Australian setting Convicts & Cthulhu.

Podcast Promo Tangent…Brian Posehn’s Nerd Poker (On iTunes here).

Dad DND podcast. (On iTunes)

Winners of the Cult of Chaos scenario writing contest have been announced!
Of the 11 finalist scenarios, Chaosium picked 6 that to further develop into fully laid out convention scenarios, to make available at conventions in 2017 and 2018.

These winning entries are:
Weekend in the Woods by Matt Ryan
The Kids are Alright by Jason and Ann D’Angelo
Those Within by Freddie Folds
Midnight Masquerade by Ed Possing W00t!
Searching for the Rhinegold by Benjaim Constantineau and Jean-Sébastien Boisvert Dansereau
As the Leaf Withers on the Vine by Charles Perryman

Congratulations!

Runners up: Mark Platt, Morgan Hua, Jay Jong, Aaron Eskenazi, and Jason Michal.

Gatsby and the Great Race at Nexus Game Fair on May 26th!

Ed Possing, Jen Martin, her husband Mark Martin and Cory Welch are going to run Gatsby and the Great Race at Nexus. It'll be a three table game with 18 maximum seats - we only 8 players right now, but we'd love to try and have it as full as possible. If it works for you to do a PSA, we'd love to get it on the MUP.

Nexus Game Fair is at the Hyatt in Milwaukee, WI, Memorial Day Weekend, May 26-29th - the whole holiday weekend. We're going to run Saturday, May 27th from 6 PM until midnight.

Listener Feedback
Voicemail from Ritterton regarding episode 120.


iTunes Reviews
StormsEnd from USA on April 12, 2017:
Awesome Podcast
These guys do a great job. The format is great, its just like sitting around with your friends talking about RPGS. I love listening to the debates and bouncing ideas off each other. My games have gone from ok to spectacular. Keep up the good work.

The Farquhar from Canada on April 7, 2017:
Greeting from the Great White North
I was recommended this by someone on the Yog-Sothoth website and I’m very glad they did. Currently trying to catch up from ep 85. Keeper Dan’s laugh is so infectious I can’t help but join in. I don’t play Call of Cthulhu RPG (unfortunately) but I do love the mythos itself and its other game variants. I’ve been listening to your podcast as I write for our horror/mystery games using the old Supernatural RPG system (by Margaret Weis Productions); its helps to keep me in the right frame of mind as I take a break here and there or hit a snag. Please consider a Go Pods! Fighting Cephalopods car decal. Keep up the great work and GO PODS!

Harbaugh87 from USA on March 29, 2017:
So Awesome, You Will Need To Make a SAN Check!
This podcast is the real deal. If you like CoC or are even remotely interested in Lovecraft, you will love this podcast! Keep up the great work, guys. Go Pods!!


Topic
"Breaking down bad horror movie tropes and mining them for good scenario ideas" - Hat tip top Sean for the suggestion.

Here is a great site for exploring tropes: TV Tropes

A link to a list of horror movie survival rules as outlined in Scream.

Chad
Category 7: The End of the World
Dark Night of the Scarecrow

Dan
Avalanche (1978)
The Descent (2005)
Island Of Terror (1966) (Trailer here)
Sharktopus
Aberration(1997)
Mutant- 1984
Strange Things - 11 Movie Collection

Murph
Frankenhooker (1990)
Blood Sand (Here on IMDB)
The Host
Dreamscape
Darkman (1990)
Pontypool
Cabin Fever
The Green Inferno (2013)
Avenged (2013)
Landmine Goes Click

Jon
The World Beyond (1978 TV movie)
Tropes: Psychic Sensitive person, & magically created mindless monster
Trilogy of Terror (1975 TV movie)
Tropes: Animated doll, & solitary victim
The Stuff (1985 movie)
Tropes: alien monster, & human transformation into monsters



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olEbwhWDYwM

https://youtu.be/kGTJ4Cv5ktE

.

Damn you guys for reminding me of TVTropes! That site is such a time-sink

Danial79 wrote:Damn you guys for reminding me of TVTropes! That site is such a time-sink

You are most welcome. Serving time sinks since 2012.

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Interesting I linked to Yog-Sothoths wiki and it's long section of films in a comment to the last episode, I might as well link to it here as well:

http://www.yog-sothoth.com/wiki/index.p ... lm:General

TV Tropes is indeed a major time sink, but well worth exploring.

Also worth looking at are two of the major Genre review sites on the net, Scott Ashlin's, 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting:

http://www.1000misspenthours.com/index.html

and Richard Scheib's The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review:

http://moria.co.nz/

Neither of these pages have search engines, but if you know what you are looking for you have a pretty good chance of finding it, or something just as interesting.

And I will finish up with the trailer to a bad film called 'Nightscape', there is some interesting name dropping starting around 0:39 and if you cannot use the audio that makes up the first 40 - 50 seconds of the trailer in some way, shape or form, I will be greatly surprised.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4axOD0h7BNQ

Whilst down the TV Tropes rabbit hole, I've discovered that many of Lovecraft's stories have their own page, as well as the RPG itself, though the tropes therein are primarily associated with specific scenarios.

Hey, I heard your complaints about skype at the start of the last episode. Have you tried Discord? I know some podcasters have been switching over to it, as it is much easier to record from and has fewer technical issues getting it working for everyone.

Graham wrote:Scott Ashlin's, 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting:

http://www.1000misspenthours.com/index.html

Shame that website is stuck in the 90s though. I really like the content but I find the white text on black incredibly hard to read for extended periods of time.

The other website is also extremely dated, but at least it's readable

Graham wrote:Interesting I linked to Yog-Sothoths wiki and it's long section of films in a comment to the last episode, I might as well link to it here as well:

http://www.yog-sothoth.com/wiki/index.p ... lm:General

TV Tropes is indeed a major time sink, but well worth exploring.

Also worth looking at are two of the major Genre review sites on the net, Scott Ashlin's, 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting:

http://www.1000misspenthours.com/index.html

and Richard Scheib's The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review:

http://moria.co.nz/

Neither of these pages have search engines, but if you know what you are looking for you have a pretty good chance of finding it, or something just as interesting.

And I will finish up with the trailer to a bad film called 'Nightscape', there is some interesting name dropping starting around 0:39 and if you cannot use the audio that makes up the first 40 - 50 seconds of the trailer in some way, shape or form, I will be greatly surprised.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4axOD0h7BNQ

Awesome links, Graham. No fear, Card Catalog is not dead! We just skip it sometimes if the Crier is super long or...if we spent 2 hours fixing tech glitches and need to get to bed.

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Canageek wrote:Hey, I heard your complaints about skype at the start of the last episode. Have you tried Discord? I know some podcasters have been switching over to it, as it is much easier to record from and has fewer technical issues getting it working for everyone.

I think we will investigate, Canageek. Yes, we've had no end of tech issues.

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Danial79 wrote:Whilst down the TV Tropes rabbit hole, I've discovered that many of Lovecraft's stories have their own page, as well as the RPG itself, though the tropes therein are primarily associated with specific scenarios.

Cool! Yes, it is a great resource and more thorough than expected.

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